For conventional gas oven appliances, combustion air (i.e. primary air) is provided to one or more gas burners through openings in the front and/or bottom of the appliance. Air flows through these openings and passes into the cabinet of the appliance, flows around and past internal components, and eventually to the gas burner(s). For such designs, the oven relies upon the relatively open spaces between internal components to allow enough air flow to supply combustion of a gaseous fuel in order to heat the oven.
To increase consumer appeal, it is desirable to increase the volume or space available for cooking in an oven. Such additional space allows for larger or multiple food items during cooking However, simply increasing the overall size of the appliance is generally not practical due to e.g., space constraints within a kitchen area and/or standardization of the sizes used for providing cabinet spaces or other locations within the kitchen areas.
Accordingly, one desirable way to increase the size of the appliance is to enlarge the volume of the cooking space within the oven while maintaining the overall size of the oven cabinet, which contains the cooking space and other components of the oven. Such an approach will necessarily compact the internal oven components into a more confined space between the oven's exterior cabinet and the walls of the internal cooking space. This means that the oven components are closer together and less space is available for the flow of combustion air from the exterior of the oven to the burner(s). The addition of various options to the oven only further decreases the availability of space for the flow of combustion air as well. For double ovens, the requirement of temperature dependence between the ovens even further limits the ability to channel air for the burners.
Accordingly, an oven appliance that includes an apparatus for feeding or channeling air to the burner(s) would be useful. Such an apparatus that allows for increasing the volumetric capacity of the cooking space of the oven while still providing for an adequate flow of combustion air to the burner would be particularly beneficial. An apparatus that also provides adequate combustion air while also allowing for the addition of options into the cabinet space of the oven would also be useful.